Category: Artificial Intelligence

As a technical people, we usually see AI solutions as a bunch of really smart algorithms operating on statistical models, doing nonlinear computations. In general something extremely abstract, what its roots in programming languages.
But, as “neural network” term may suggest, many of those solutions are inspired by biology, primarily biological brain.

Some time ago, DeepMind researchers published paper: Neuroscience-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, where they highlighted some AI techniques which directly or indirectly come from neuroscience. I will try to sum it up, but if you would like to read full version, it can be found under this link:

Roots of AI

One of many definitions describes AI as hypothetical intelligence, created not by nature but artificially, in the engineering process. One of the goals of it is to create human-level, General Artificial Intelligence. Many people argue if such an intelligence is even possible, but there is one thing which proves it: it’s a human brain.

It seems natural that neuroscience is used as a guide or an inspiration for new types of architectures and algorithms. Biological computation very often works better than mathematical and logic-based methods, especially when it comes to cognitive functions.
Moreover, if current, still far-from-ideal AI techniques can be found as a core of brain functioning, it’s pretty likely that in some time in the future engineering effort pays off.
At the end, neuroscience can be also a good validation for existing AI solutions.

This is my 2nd publication in field of Artificial Intelligence, prepared as a part of my project in AI Nanodegree classes. This time the goal was to write research paper about important historical developments in the field of AI planning and search. I hope you will like it 🙂.

Planning or more precisely: automated planning and scheduling is one of the major fields of AI (among the others like: Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision and more). Planning focuses on realisation of strategies or action sequences executed by:

Intelligent agents — the autonomous entities (software of hardware) being able to observe the world through different types of sensors and perform actions based on those observations.

One of required skills as an Artificial Intelligence engineer is ability to understand and explain highly technical research papers in this field. One of my projects as a student in AI Nanodegree classes is an analysis of seminal paper in the field of Game-Playing. The target of my analysis was Nature’s paper about technical side of AlphaGo — Google Deepmind system which for the first time in history beat elite professional Go player, winning by 5 games to 0 with European Go champion — Fan Hui.

The goal of this summary (and my future publications) is to make this knowledge widely understandable, especially for those who are just starting the journey in field of AI or those who doesn’t have any experience in this area at all.

The original paper — Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search:

Since we’re still years or even decades (are we?) from having at least prototype of flying metal suite, there is one piece of it which can be closer than we think.

JARVIS

While Vibranium Arc Reactor is a heart of Iron Man suit, the equally important thing is its brain — Jarvis.
“Jarvis is a highly advanced computerized A.I. developed by Tony Stark, (…) to manage almost everything, especially matters related to technology, in Tony’s life.” Does it sound familiar? Continue reading “Iron Man’s Jarvis — is it still a fiction?”